Does a public health Nanny State know best?
AI isn't replacing humans; it’s dissolving the middle layers of work. Routine work vanishes and what remains demands a new kind of performer, which Dr Kenny Ching calls ‘digital athletes’. This talk is about elite Esports teams and their secret: that your fiercest rivals are often your most efficient knowledge partners.
Join Kenny as he explains how cooperation, not competition, is now the edge – but that edge depends on knowledge networks that are quietly fracturing. He will discuss how AI floods the spaces where experts once gathered – professional forums, research communities, industry conversations – and something shifts. When you can't tell insight from imitation, why contribute at all?
The people who built our knowledge infrastructure are slowly stepping back, and most of us haven't noticed yet. And as for New Zealand? Learn how our country’s edge was never scale – it was network quality. That is now the thing worth fighting for.
Bio
Dr Kenny Ching is a Senior Lecturer in Strategy at the Business School. He holds a PhD from MIT and spent years as a research economist and fund manager before returning to academia. He studies firm performance and behaviour under pressure, from elite Esports competitions to national administrative datasets, and is examining how AI is quietly reshaping the infrastructure of expertise itself. His research appears in leading international journals.
Event
Tuesday, 25 August 2026, 7:30pm – 8:30pm @Dice & Fork, 210 Victoria Street West, Freemans Bay, Auckland 1010
The other talk at this location is Does a public health Nanny State know best? at 6:00pm – 7:00pm
